UNC Receiver Erik Highsmith Reportedly Plagiarized An Essay About Chickens Written By 11-Year-Olds

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As the spring 2011 semester wound to a close, UNC-Chapel Hill football player Erik Highsmith had nothing to show for the blog students were supposed to contribute to for a communications class, his instructor said. The blog accounted for 30 percent of a student's grade.

Highsmith wrote two posts in seven days. The first was about poultry farming, the second about people and pets.

Very little of either post was in his own words.

The first entry was virtually identical to a passage on an education website written by four 11-year-olds for their peers. The second mirrored much of an essay someone posted on Urch.com, a website that helps people prepare for the SAT, GRE and other college entry exams.

If you yourself are curious about poultry farms, you can read the original entry here.

For his part, Highsmith sort of denies it:

He's right: it wasn't an 11-year-old, it was four 11-year-olds.

[ SportsGrid]